


by daybreak we'll be gone

by alchemystique



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, sansa/gendry is very much implied but not explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 15:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11992389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: Gendry and Jon meet in the crypts of Winterfell.





	by daybreak we'll be gone

**Author's Note:**

> It's all angst ahead folks.

He glances up at the sound of footfalls - the gentle scrape of the King’s heal against the gravel at their feet, the quiet brush of his cloak as it settledsin around him.

The look he shares with Jon Snow encompasses so much more than Gendry wants it to. 

This world isn’t for them any more. They’ve fought their fight, and lived to tell the tale. It’s all there is for them, any more. A world to rebuild, a country to run, a generation of children to raise on stories of great battles and victories, of heavy losses, of those who died to save a realm neither of them is sure deserved saving. Of a winter that seemed never to end, that swallowed the warmth of the world whole and spit out remnants of men, bits of pieces of flesh and bone and life stolen in it’s jaws never to be returned.

He moves to bend the knee, his head dipping low, and Jon makes a noise, low in his throat, a disapproving noise that reminds him so much of Arya it steals his breath.

“Don’t,” the other man murmurs, and Gendry knows better than to protest. He learned a long time ago to take the Starks at their word when they said they didn’t want deference.  


The crypts are silent, save for their breathing. They’re far enough below not to hear the sound of the work being done above, a castle reforged from the ground up, new stone and new halls and new memories to be made by people who are not them.

“It’s good she’s here,” Gendry finally manages, his voice firm, even where it should shake, where his hands should tremble and the world should open up and swallow him whole.  


The crypts were the only part of Winterfell that survived the Battle for the Dawn, and Gendry thinks it fitting. Memories of that old world should stay below the ground, far below, where they could not haunt this new world they’ve been left behind to make.

“It’s where she belongs.”  


There’d been no bones to gather, no body to bury. She’d been alive, brilliant and bold and beautiful, dancing through her enemies, and then she’d been gone.

Jon’s hand shakes as it reaches out, gloved hand sliding over the thin sword held between delicately carved fingers. Too delicate, everything about the stone statue is too delicate for the fearsome beast of a woman it was meant to capture, but Gendry supposed that was the way of things. Memories could be wiped clean, people lost could be built up or torn down to please whatever audience would listen. She is, at least, not demure - standing proud and sure with a weapon in each hand, at least in that they got her right.

“She’d fuckin’ hate this damn thing,” Jon says, and it startles a laugh out of Gendry.   


“Nose is all wrong,” Gendry agrees, and Jon stutters out a laugh of his own.   


They stand there for a while, low, quiet guffaws escaping them every once in a while as they find some new flaw in it, each new observation causing Gendry’s throat to tighten, until they eventually drift into silence, the candlelight flickering around them.

“She wanted me to be her family,” Gendry admits into the silence, swallowing back the lump in his throat. He is unsurprised when Jon’s hand grasps at his shoulder, the force of it light but the meaning behind it nearly enough to buckle his knees. “I just wanted to be worthy of it.”  


Outside in the cool air they breathe deep, the King in his heavy furs, Gendry in the boiled leather armor he’s taken to like a second skin. He hasn’t taken it off - though there are no more battles to be fought, though he hopes to never pick up another weapon he is not forging, the battle sits in him still, and so he keeps his northern armor and he continues to pick up the accent of the north without really meaning to. 

“Sansa tells me you’ve been working on a new sword.”   


It’s the only weapon he’s worked on since the sun rose over the horizon nearly a year ago. There’s been so many other things to do. He’s spent his time turning steel weapons into tools for building, into crowns and sigils and armor for the new Kingsguard, into nails to mend bridges and build homes. If he never saw another sword he’d be happy for it, save this one.

“Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth asked me to forge it,” he tells Jon, and Jon swallows heavily. They’d lost Jaime and Brienne both, but their stories were favored by those who remained to listen. Jon must know what he means by it though. They’d all known how Widow’s Wail and Oathkeeper had been created.   


He’d never be able to remake Ice. That hadn’t been the intent, not really. He’d witnessed the destruction of the Starks, watched them picked off, one by one, watched their legacy destroyed, and now all that was left was the crumbling stones of a broken castle and the steel back of Lady Sansa. 

He couldn’t make the Starks whole again, but at least he could give Jon and his cousin something to remember them.

“Never worked Valyrian steel before, but it ain’t that different, in the end.”  


It’s all the same, at the end of the day. Weapons or tools or fancy jewelry fit for royalty, it all comes together the same way. 

“Gendry, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think you’ve sold yourself short. You’re the best smith in the Seven Kingdoms.”  


“Aye.” He’s pleased when the King doesn’t seem to notice the very near mimicry of his own voice. “Made you enough fucking weapons in the last few years to arm the entire kingdom.”  


Jon is quiet for a moment, as they stare out across the yard. On the far side of it is one of the only completed buildings, and just outside the forge stands Sansa, watching them both carefully as a silver-haired babe clutches at the furs around her neck. 

“It might very well be your last,” Jon tells him, and though Gendry wants to protest, he knows it’s true. There is a realm to rebuild, and the child in Lady Sansa’s arms is only the first of many that will be born in this new world.  


She’s beautiful, Lady Sansa is, just like Arya had said - and it hurts to think that he should cast aside the memory of the fierce little wolf who’d captured his attention all those years ago.

But Sansa had made an excellent point, when she’d brought forth the idea of a marriage between the old houses. 

They shuffle into the forge without a word, and it’s not at all what Gendry wanted - he’d wanted to present the sword at the coronation, bend the knee to the King, his brother, his friend, no matter the enmity that had existed in the past. 

It’s better this way. Just the three of them, standing in the forge as Gendry unrolls the sword from the moth eaten canvas he’s covered it in.

He’d never seen Ice, never known the heft of it or the shape of the pommel, never felt the hilt of it beneath his palm, but Jon draws in a sharp breath as it is unveiled, and Lady Stark swallows as the babe held to her heart murmurs in her sleep.

“It’s beautiful,” she manages, a gloved hand reaching toward it, leather sliding over the etchings along the middle of it.   


“It’s _heavy_ ,” is all Gendry can think of in reply, and a corner of her mouth tics up in amusement.   


It’s all that’s left. Here in this room - Lady Stark of Winterfell, King Jon, and this sword, thats all there is anymore. Winterfell is gone, and almost all who remembered it gone too. It’s just memories now - the ones Sansa and Jon whisper in the firelight, the ones Gendry shares after enough cups of ale, the memories he’d poured back into the steel as he reforged the last living legacy of the Starks.

“Doubt it’ll be comfortable to wear on that fine throne of yours,” Gendry tells Jon, thinking of the way the Iron Throne had looked as they’d melted it down, piece by piece, until it was nothing more than molten steel ready to be made into farming tools and nails, thinking of the simple wooden chair that had gone up in it’s place. Jon glances up him before turning his gaze to Sansa. She gives a terse nod, as though answering a question in her cousins eyes.  


“I’ve already got a sword. This one - it’s meant to stay in Winterfell. In the North.”  


Confusion must settle in his gaze, for Jon catches his eye. “It’s why I came. I’m naming you Warden of the North.”

“Your Grace, I can’t accept -.”  


“You can, and you will.”  


“It should be Sansa.”  


None of them remark on the fact that he’s forgotten to use her title. It’s new, this strange friendship that has grown between Lady Stark and himself, and it makes a strategic kind of sense. He’s caught himself more than once wanting to call her milady, just to see if her ire might rise at it - and it does, but perhaps not for the same reason it had her sister.

“I have quite enough to do at the moment, Ser. You’ll accept your King’s gifts and be happy for it.”  


“Yes, m’lady.”   


There’s plenty more to protest - the King seems to have implied that the sword stays with the Warden, and he feels every bit the idiot boy Arya had always told him he was as Sansa rolls her eyes. 

“And you’ll have to stop calling me that.”  


“Aye, m’lady.” He says it with a cheeky grin, and she huffs, turning up her nose like a proper lady should, but there’s mirth in her eyes, and he feels a pang in his chest, aches for a fist at his arm, a fiery blaze of anger. All he gets is a curl of rosy lip and an annoyed tilt of chin, in a face too narrow, in eyes the wrong shade.   


“You’ll need a name for it,” Jon tells him, reaching towards Sansa as the baby starts to fuss. Gendry’s never seen a man so intent on carting around a child as Jon Snow seems to be, but he can’t really blame him. He’d lost the same thing Jon had lost on the battlefield, but all Gendry has left to hold on to is dusty memories and a woman he’ll never feel as much for as he had her sister.

Gendry runs his finger along the blade, glances between his Lady and his King. “Don’t suppose Needle really fits.”

The baby takes that moment to let out a wail, and even muffled against Jon’s furs it’s loud enough to startle them all. 

“Not Needle then.” He tells the crying bundle softly, and the heir to the Seven Kingdoms curls her hand into a fist and yanks hard on her father’s beard, seemingly satisfied by the grunt of pain it elicits.  


“I think _M’lady_ might do quite well,” Sansa tells him, her hand hovering close to his but never quite reaching out, and despite himself, despite the hundreds of reasons he has to brood and frown and curse the world, he finds himself bursting into laughter, grinning ear to ear while the usually cool and collected Lady Stark smiles back at him.   


There aren’t many reasons any of them can find to smile these days. The King has made him a Baratheon now that the name means next to nothing, and they’ve all lost more than they can ever reclaim in the time left to them. But new walls they have left to build, new steel to forge, new life to bring into this world, new mistakes to be made. Those that are gone are not lost to them, and in time the pain of their memory might fade. 

He can’t forget. Won’t forget. He doesn’t have it in him. This world isn’t for him, but he can make something of it for those who will come after him. And when it’s done and he’s gone, when all of them are nothing more than bone and memory, in the stories they tell, he hopes he’s worthy of being a part of it.


End file.
